Explorers attempted and mostly failed over the centuries to establish a pathway from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the icebound North, a quest often punctuated by starvation and scurvy. Yet within just 40 years, and maybe many fewer, an ascending thermometer will likely mean that the maritime dream of Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook will turn into an actual route of commerce that competes with the Panama Canal.

The term "glacial change" has taken on a meaning opposite to its common usage. Yet in reality, Arctic shipping lanes would count as one of the more benign effects of accelerated climate change. The repercussions of melting glaciers, disruptions in the Gulf Stream and record heat waves edge toward the apocalyptic: floods, pestilence, hurricanes, droughts--even itchier cases of poison ivy. Month after month, reports mount of the deleterious effects of rising carbon levels. One recent study chronicled threats to coral and other marine organisms, another a big upswing in major wildfires in the western U.S. that have resulted because of warming.

This article was originally published with the title A Climate Repair Manual.

1 Comments

1. 1. Michael Cook 01:44 PM 12/9/09

   I'm glad my esteemed ancestor Captain Cook gets recognition for the attempt to find a NW passage. The 40-year estimate of when ordinary shipping will be routinely able to sail the Arctic Ocean between Europe, Murmansk, Japan, Greenland, and other points of interest in the Northern Hemisphere are way too optimistic.
   
   Specially reinforced ships are able to make the journey, provided they have a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker to follow. True, the Arctic Ice can melt back pretty far some summers (probably due to silt falling on the ice from Chinese factories and accelerating melting) but the ice freezes back quickly in the Fall because the Arctic air mass still seems to be getting quite cold once the sun gets lower in the sky.
   
   In fact, some of that Arctic air is stalled over Seattle this week, causing us to have a record low of 18 degrees F. at SeaTac airport this morning. At some point weather evidence as perceived by the unwashed public will entirely erode the credibility of a scientific establishment that seems inclined to destroy the original data it bases its wild conclusions on after reaching those conclusions and feeding the headlines to an MSM that never questioned any press release with a green pedigree attacked to it.

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